Genealogy News Transcript Episode 84

MyHeritage DNA Matching Service Terms of Use have Changed

MyHeritage recently announced a DNA matching services that will be coming soon. The Legal Genealogists, Judy Russell, read the terms of service and summarized it in a blog post. The terms basically said that MyHeritage could do what they wanted with your DNA, forever.

They have since changed their terms so that the statement about MyHeritage getting the rights to “transfer, lease, rent, sell, share and/or or otherwise distribute de-identified information to third parties for any purpose, including without limitation, internal business purposes” using your DNA has been deleted. Also gone is the part about transferring your DNA results to third parties without your consent. And the part about MyHeritage having access to your DNA forever is gone. You now can change your mind about using MyHeritage DNA matching and MyHeritage will no longer be able to use your DNA for anything.

This makes it so the user has control of how their DNA can be used at MyHeritage.

23andMe Transitioning Old Accounts to New Website

23andMe is finally starting to transition old accounts to their “new experience” website. These old accounts are those who tested before 23andMe had issues with the FDA, that would be for those who tested before November 2013.

The “new experience” website was released in November 2015.

Emails are being sent to those with old accounts. You will need to login to 23andMe to answer some survey questions and verify your settings. There is a date given for when you need to do this. 23andMe is doing this in stages, so not everyone will have the same timeframe for them to login and and the date their accounts will transition to the new design will be different.

You will receive a PDF file that will have all the health reports from when you originally tested. Some people may have chosen not to unlock the reports for Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s. You will have one more chance to unlock these reports. If you decide not to, you will not be able to see these reports later. They have not been approved by the FDA so they are not available in the new system.

If you don’t choose to have your health reports archived in a PDF file, you will not have access to them later.

I talked about the new 23andMe website in episode 71 at the beginning of the show. You can find out more information on the new website there.

23andMe Adds a New Tool – Relatives in Common

23andMe has a new tool in the DNA Relatives section of their new website. The tool is called Relatives in Common. It’s only available right now to those who opted in to Open Sharing. Eventually it will be rolled out to everyone.

The tool lets you see the current matches that you and a DNA relative have in common and whether all three of you share an overlapping segment of DNA.

First you select a relative to compare with and then you get a list of relatives that you have in common, the percent of DNA shared, and the predicted relationship.

This new tool makes it easy to identify triangulated segments.

AncestryDNA Improves Accuracy of New Ancestor Discoveries

AncestryDNA has a feature called New Ancestor Discoveries. These New Ancestor Discoveries appear when you share significant amounts of DNA with members of a DNA Circle. This means that you may be related to the ancestor that the circle is built around. A DNA Circle has members whose DNA matches and they share a common ancestor.

AncestryDNA is growing rapidly with many people deciding to test, the DNA Circles are expanding. With this growth, Ancestry decided to update how New Ancestor Discoveries are determined.

They have updated the criteria to make it more conservative and increase the accuracy of New Ancestor Discoveries. That means that you will need more connections in a DNA Circle before you get a New Ancestor Discovery.

Previously you needed to match at least 2 members in a DNA Circle, now you must match 3 of a small DNA Circle for a New Ancestor Discovery. For larger DNA Circles users must match 20% of the circle to get a New Ancestor Discovery.

New German Records at Ancestry

Ancestry has published almost 3 million new records for German civil registration. These records include birth, marriage and death records from three German cities – Frankenberg, Karlsruhe and Mönchengladbach.

Civil registration began on October 1, 1874 in Prussian provinces, and later on January 1, 1876 for the entire German Empire.

Ancestry has created a guide for these records that explain what every entry is on the record.

New Indiana Records at Ancestry

Ancestry has digitized lots of Indiana vital records. Through a partnership with Indiana state officials almost 17 million Indiana genealogy records have been digitized.

The records include birth and death records starting from the early 1900s and marriage records from 1958 to 2005.

You will need an Ancestry subscription to view the records or visit the Indiana State Archives in Indianapolis where you can obtain copies for 25 cents each.

After three years, when Ancestry can recoup its costs for digitizing the records, the records will be made free online.

New City’s City Record to be Digitized

There’s a new project underway to digitize 120 years of the City Record, a New York newspaper. More than a million pages will be digitized from 1873 to 1998. The year 1998 was when the paper went online so issues since then are already in a digital format.

The newspaper publishes reports and regulations from every department of the New York city government. Some of the things you will find in this paper are payments, contracts, appointments to office, and infrastructure projects. There’s information on public hearings, meetings, auctions, and official rules proposed and adopted by city agencies.

The City Record already has a searchable database with this type of information for the past few years. With this digitization project all the material from the paper will be searchable.

Free Access to New York Records during the Month of June

All New York databases at AmericanAncestors.org can be searched and accessed for free during the month of June. AmericanAncestors.org is a subscription website from the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

FamilySearch has Created a Civil War Section at its Website

FamilySearch has made it easier to search for Civil War ancestors. They’ve brought together many Civil War collections found online in one place at familysearch.org/civil-war.

The revamped website provides links to the collections and links to helpful pages about the different collections. There are also links to multimedia courses about the Civil War.

Records available related to the Civil War include Union and Confederate pension files, prisoner of war, cemetery, National Solider Home, and census records. Many of the records are available by state.

The Freedmen’s Bank and Bureau records are included. They are helpful for locating African American Civil War ancestors.

Not all the records listed are found at the free FamilySearch website. In order to view some of the records, you will need a subscription to Fold3.

New Records at Findmypast

Over 38,000 records of Royal Marine and Royal Navy service men who fought at the Battle of Jutland are now available at Findmypast. These records were held at The National Archives and Naval and Military Press. They contain lots of information about Royal Marines and Royal Navy personnel.

The Battle of Jutland was the largest naval battle of the First World War.

Lots of articles have been added to the Irish Newspapers collection and over 5,000 records have been added for Ireland, Poverty Relief Funds 1821 – 1874.

A new collection called Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania, Bethany Children’s Home Indexes contains information about children in that area whose parents had died.

There’s a new browsable collection for the British Royal Navy & Royal Marines service and pension records.

Findmypast has added a varied collection containing nine historic family and local history publications from Ireland

Books about Scottish Families go Online

The National Library of Scotland has added to their digital library 350 books relating to the histories of Scottish families. These are old, out-of-copyright books that contain memoirs or genealogies of families in Scotland.

You can read these books online or download them to read offline. They are searchable.

RootsIreland has a One Day Subscription

The Roots Ireland website has a new 24-hour subscription available. If you later decide you want a full subscription, the amount you paid for your one-day subscription will be deducted from the cost of the full subscription. You have 30 days before that offer expires. The daily subscription is about $12.

The Roots Ireland website has a large collection of transcribed parish records of the island of Ireland.

Tipperary Studies Website Launched

A new website about Tipperary in Ireland has launched. The address is TipperaryStudies.ie. At the new site you’ll find Rate Books for the Poor Law Unions of Cashel, Nenagh, and Thurles. There are also Irish Tourist Association Reports (1942-1945) for the county’s parishes.

Plans are to continue adding to the collection so it becomes the “go-to” resource for the study of the county’s history.

National Archives of Norway Add Account Books and Church Books

The National Archives of Norway makes its material available for public use at its website called the Digital Archives and they are always adding to it. Recently they added a transcribed index for the account books for the fiefs 1584 – 1567. You can search by farm name or municipality. Mostly you will find information about taxes but you may find out who lived on the farm parish.

They have also placed on the website lots of church books from many different parishes. It’s worth a look if you have Norwegian ancestors. I’ll have a link in the show notes to the most recent 100 page that lists what’s been added.

Jamboree Videos Available until July 5

The Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree streamed 14 sessions live. These sessions were recorded and are available for viewing until July 5. You just need to sign up with your email and you will be able to view the sessions.

They also live streamed some DNA sessions. These you had to pay for and they are available until July 5 for viewing. You still need to pay before you can view them. Each sessions costs $20 or you can pay $99 for all 6 sessions.

New Ancestry Academy Courses

There are some new courses at Ancestry Academy.

Discovering the History of Your House on Ancestry, with Marian Pierre-Louis
The Lure of the Train Whistle: Researching Railroad Workers, with Paula Stuart-Warren
Family History: Putting the Pieces Together, with Donna M. Moughty
Behind the Scenes: The Science Behind AncestryDNA Results, with Catherine A. Ball

Ancestry Academy costs $11.99 for one month, $99 for year or $199 for 6 months which includes access to Ancestry, Fold3 and Newspapers.com. If you have a World Explorer subscription to Ancestry, you get access to Ancestry Academy at no extra charge.

BCG Contest Numbering ABC TV’s Modern Family

The Board for Certification of Genealogists is holding a contest. Your assignment is to number the genealogy of ABC TV’s Modern Family. This family is a blended family like those we encounter in real life.

For the past month the BCG blog Springboard posts have been about numbering for genealogy.

The winner gets to pick one of these prizes – an AncestryDNA test, a 37-marker Y-DNA test from Family Tree DNA, or a copy of the book Mastering Genealogical Proof. The second place winner will choose between the last two prizes available and the third place winner will get the prize that the other two did not choose.

The contest will run until July 1. Email your entry to NumberingContest@gmail.com. I’ll have a link in the show notes for all the rules.

Old Photo Contest

Maureen Taylor who is known as the Photo Detective, has something called the Wonky Whiskers contest going on until June 16th. To enter the contest, you post an old photo of man with a mustache to Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with the hash tag of #GFMUST16@photodetective. The winner will receive a $50 gift card to The Art of Shaving and a copy of the book Hairstyles 1840 – 1900 worth $25.

Boy Scouts and BillionGraves Nationwide Service Project

Boy Scouts and members of the Unites States Armed Forces will be participating in a nationwide service project on Saturday, July 30. They will be photographing and logging the GPS location of veteran memorials and headstones and uploading them to BillionGraves.

They will use the BillionGraves app on their smart phones to take the pictures and then others will transcribe them at the BillionGraves website.

The general public will be able to add their own tributes at the BillionGraves website to ensure these veterans are never forgotten.

DearMyrtle still has weekly Google Hangouts. Besides the weekly Mondays with Myrt and Wacky Wednesday, the monthly Genealogy Game night, she has two weekly study groups going on right now – British & Irish Military Research and ESM’s QuickLessons based on Elizabeth Shown Mills QuickLessons.

You can find all the webinars mentioned and more at the calendar at Geneatopia.com.

And that’s it for this episode.

You can send email to geneatopia@gmail.com

You can find links to things mentioned in this show in the show notes at Geneatopia.com as well as a transcript. The transcript can also be found in the Geneatopia Flipboard magazine.